


Last Thread

by CloudDreamer



Series: Reconciliation [2]
Category: Dr. Carmilla (Musician), The Knotley Chronicles - Cassandra (Nortsapa), The Mechanisms (Band)
Genre: (but it’s the Mechanisms), Cats, Chronic Illness, Dr Catmilla, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Gun Violence, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Lore..., Post DTTM, unreality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-19
Updated: 2020-10-19
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:15:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27097963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CloudDreamer/pseuds/CloudDreamer
Summary: Just because Nastya is trying to do better now doesn’t mean Chrysanthemum has any obligation to forgive her.For?That’s a story for another time. One Nastya has forgotten, but the witch hasn’t.Alternative title: The vampire, the witch, and the princess.
Relationships: Chrysanthemum Knotley-Brynjólfur & Clone Maki Yamazaki, Chrysanthemum Knotley-Brynjólfur & Nastya Rasputina, Dr Carmilla & Nastya Rasputina
Series: Reconciliation [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1977859
Kudos: 3





	Last Thread

**Author's Note:**

> Check out @MumKnotley on Twitter for more information on Chrysanthemum! Although she's not written by any of the "official" authors -- Mechanisms, Maki Yamazaki, etc. -- I personally consider her entire story canonical because it's really good. I'm probably going to write more fic featuring her in the future, if you're interested in that! Cassandra's a really great writer and has set up some really fun worldbuilding! <3

The last member of the Doctor’s crew does not want to talk to Nastya. She does not seem to want to acknowledge the Mechanism’s existence at all. Even finding her for long enough for the witch to vanish out of reach is a struggle, and if Nastya wasn’t repulsed by the idea of asking for help with anything, especially from her, then Carmilla would’ve told her it was the same with them at first.

It’d taken centuries for them to have as much as a civil conversation, and uncountable eons more for a friendship to blossom, against both of their explicit wishes and better judgement. And Carmilla, most of the time, tried. Nastya had not tried since she died, and that was so long ago, the events were dust in her memory. She had not tried to be better. She doesn’t even know if she still can, if the part of her that gave a shit hadn’t shriveled up without red hot blood pulsing through it. 

She sort of wants to, though, and she thinks that should count for something. Maybe. 

Or not. Chrysanthemum’s furtive glances are well earned. Nastya is used to others’s fear and part of her relishes the power that fear gave her. She’s so drunk on the idea that someone who regularly traveled with the Doctor could be intimidated by her, could be afraid of her, that it takes longer than it should — seventeen years of hide and seek aboard the Silvana — for her to see the truth.

She opens a door to see Chrysanthemum threading a needle, adjusting dimensions to make it and the silver embroidery floss easier to manage. She’s sitting with a quilt in progress wrapped across her lap, long hair pulled up in a messy pony tail to keep it from falling into her face, and Nastya knows the look she wears. That intent gaze, the too tightly clenched teeth... this simple task of creating something beautiful is to her like fixing burnt out technology to Nastya or like cleaning his guns is to Jonny. Was, she reminds herself, and stiffens her posture. 

She doesn’t make her presence known, just leans against the frame of the door, arms folded. Nastya wears one of Doctor Carmilla’s old dress shirts, still a bit too big for her, and black leggings. Simple and timeless, in comparison to the identifiably Victorian layers of fabric Chrysanthemum piles upon herself. Nastya recognizes the way she wears her long sleeved dresses that never show any more than an inch of her neck, recognizes it in how Jonny covers himself — covered — himself in belts. There’s something beneath that, something messy. 

Something that’s still bleeding, still constantly killing her, from the way her movements seem sluggish, her sudden disappearances before Nastya can confront her just a second or two later at certain times of the month. She does her best not to show it, but Nastay knows. Her own blood, quicksilver as it is, still tries to escape her too quickly. Each little cut leaves her drowning in it. Not enough to kill each time, the rainbow shimmer of healing stitches her skin closed faster than it can clot. But it leaves stains on her black work clothes, stains that lace with soot. 

Chrysanthemum wears the dresses like armor, an insistence on clinging to this one thing about home, even as that home has long since turned to dust. Consumed by Sol’s expanding rays. She didn’t burn it. Not the planet, not all the bridges she’d built. She kept making more, even as every death weighed on her.

Two cats sit by Chrysanthemum’s feet. It’s strange, seeing true cats again. Nastya wonders if she’ll ever get over the surprise, and then she’s upset she wondered, because she knows the answer is yes. She knows one day that the octokittens will fade to nothing in her mind. Her imperfect mind, that Carmilla couldn’t fix.

One of those cats watches her, an eye clawed shut, and there’s something about them that makes Nastya’s skin shiver. The other, Nastya knows, is Sybil. Sybil hasn’t been friendly, not entirely, but she’s been more approachable than her witch. She’s allowed the two of them to exist in the same room for almost a full five minutes, last year. Time’s hard on a ship, but Carmilla keeps a consistent clock. A pattern that the Mechanisms stuck to, after she was gone. What things don’t change.

What things do.

Nastya wants to say hi, to some extent. The silence is peaceful, for as long as Chrysanthemum doesn’t realize she’s there, and that’s enough reason for any Mechanism to break anything. But Nastya holds back, for some strange reason. She listens to her own heartbeat, feels the gentle whir of the engines beneath her feet and watches that needle cross through the fabric. 

She remembers tugging a similar needle through her coat, covering up yet another bullet hole and telling Jonny that if he keeps shooting her, then it’s going to be nothing but patches. He stuck his tongue out at her, and she’d shot him instead, painting his brains against the wall. And his head turns into Carmilla’s, and then into nothing at all.

I’m here, Nastya reminds herself, but it’s so damn hard. It’s so damn hard not to reach for a gun she doesn’t carry anymore and find someone to take it out on or to crawl away and find an abandoned corner of the ship to caress, to kiss and feel the rush of hot water through the pipes and know it was for her. Because this isn’t her ship, isn’t her home. Isn’t her love. The Silvana evolves, adapts, but there’s no romance in her flight patterns, holds no wicked mind for Nastya to play her little games with. And the occupants do not trust her at best, hold some secret feeling in their hearts at worst. Nastya was shitty at reading people for a long time, but with enough time, she’d managed to half ass it, and Chrysanthemum is a mystery.

Until she isn’t. 

Until today, where she seems so... mortal. Her fingers move with practiced swiftness, silver palm flickering in the gentle light of a lamp left by her side. Even though the ship’s fluorescent lighting could easily offer better visibility, these quarters — her own personal room that always seemed to tuck itself out of Nastya’s reach, turning hard metal walls into labyrinths she’d walk for weeks — are lit in more traditional ways. From her perspective, anyway, Nastya considers everything about this place quaint. Old fashioned. 

Everything about it screams vulnerability, from the books dutifully annotated stretching across a handmade table carved with images the meaning of which Nastya can only begin to guess at, to the plants lining the windows that open into space. The thought to question how they grow outside of Carmilla’s greenhouse is her second impulse. 

Her first is to mock Chrysanthemum, for needing such creature comforts as layers of quilts across her bed and pictures of probably mostly now dead loved ones framed across the wall — some of which feature an _old_ looking Doctor Carmilla— and left by her bedside table. It’s all sincere.

Nastya still doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t know how long she stands there, eyes flickering open and shut at an uneven pace. 

There’s a cold breeze snaking through the ship’s hallways, and Nastya barely shivers. Chrysanthemum, on the other hand, lets her discomfort show, layering the in-progress quilt with these way too tiny floral details marking it all up across her lap. She coughs once, and then that leads to a whole fit. Her body is wracked with the shakes. Sybil leaps up to comfort her and the other cat just watches. 

It’s Carmilla, Nastya realizes. Something about the look in their eye, calculating and fond, is too familiar. Uncannily so, in how precisely the little gestures translate, in how still she is between her little movements.

When Chrysanthemum recovers, she reaches for a cup of tea. Takes a long sip, makes a soft sound, and scritches Sybil behind three ears before she looks up to see Nastya. And Nastya is filled with a sudden sense of shame, like she’s walked in on Gunpowder, blowing his brains out to feel something, anything for the fifth time that morning. Like she’s seen Ashes cry. This isn’t meant for her. 

She doesn’t apologize. She bares her teeth in a smirk, like this is any other chance encounter. And it is. There’s nothing to be ashamed of here, just some fucking quiltmaking in her personal quarters. There’s no blood to mop up, no need to dodge any bladed weapons.

“You,” Chrysanthemum says, and her voice is nothing like Nastya expects. She’s overheard the witch talking to the rest of the crew some of the time, and with most of them, it’s gentle. Considerate. With Carmilla, it’s tested. there’s an underlying distaste there that’s restrained for the sake of civility and music. This? This is just disgust and rage. Nastya is taken aback, literally. One foot, then another. She’s almost afraid. A piercing headache reaches into Nastya’s skull as she tries to keep looking. 

Something about Chrysanthemum is wrong, distorting across dozens of dimensions. Too many lines in all the wrong spots, nothing fitting right. There’s a thousand different variations on this room, all overlapping, all right in their own way and all wrong in the same way. It’s a puzzle where all the pieces fit with every other piece and none of them, 2D, 3D, 4D, 5D, more.

“Me?” Nastya asks, smirking. She’s seen dimensional warping shit before, hurt worse than this, nothing’s going to stop her from getting answers now. “Did I do something to you?” 

Somehow, in the midst of all the violently shifting planes, there are eyes. Perfectly clear, perfectly blue, perfectly accusatory. And Nastya sees where they look. Pictures on the wall. The Carmilla in various stages of aging, hair turning white naturally, smiling wide with two perfect eyes. 

The cat she knows has to be Carmilla steps across the distorted floorboards as if they’re perfectly flat, an unperturbed anchor in the storm of unreality. They slip past Nastya’s leg, rubbing their soft fur against her skin, before tilting their head up to give her a look like, we’ll talk later. 

“Get out,” Chrysanthemum says, sharply, and with a raw hurt that Nastya wasn’t expecting. The door slams shut in Nastya’s face as she steps back suddenly. The headache and vertigo she didn’t realize had washed over her just stop, as suddenly as they’d came. 

And that’s it from Chrysanthemum.

That’s it for this conversation. 

_Who is she?_ Nastya wonders, not for the first time. And then she wonders, _what did I do to hurt her?_

And then and then, really for the first time, she wonders, _and what can I do to make it right?_


End file.
